Page 53 of Timeless

“Herewhat?” she asked. “What is going on, Abby?”

“Come over here.” Abby motioned again for Quinn to move toward her.

Quinn let out an exasperated sigh and walked over.

“Okay. Now what?”

“What do you smell?”

“What? Abby, come on… I was working, and you just walked on in.”

“Quinn, please. What do you smell?” Abby repeated a little slower this time.

Quinn rolled her eyes and inhaled.

“I don’t know. Flowers.”

“What kind of flowers?”

“You know what kind,” she replied, staring into Abby’s gorgeous eyes. “Are your eyes brown or hazel?”

“What?” Abby asked.

“They look brown, but they’re, like, a different kind of brown.”

“Well, on my driver’s license, they’re brown, so there’syour answer, I guess. Now, can I have mine? Say it, Quinn; the flower.”

“Honeysuckle. No, I don’t know why I keep smelling it when I’m around you. I’ve probably only smelled that flower a few times in my life. So, unless you bathe in the stuff, I don’t–”

“I don’t even know that I’ve beenneara honeysuckle flower unless I was in a flower shop and they had one, but I didn’t buy it. I don’t even know what that flower smells like; I just know that that’s what I’m smelling. And I have nothing at home that smells like honeysuckle. I knowthatbecause I’ve looked at every single bottle in my house twice.”

“Okay. Well, I don’t have anything that’s honeysuckle-scented, either, so…”

“Quinn, I only smell it when I’m around you, and we’re not in the shop, where we were also smelling it, so… process of elimination: you smell like it.”

“No, I don’t because I only smell it when I’m withyou.”

“Something’s strange about that, don’t you think? The fact that we smell a flower, which we shouldn’t even know what it smells like, only when we’re with the other person. We both identified it as the same flower, and it’s not just floral to us because it’s a specific flower. That’s weird.”

“I guess so, yeah.” Quinn shrugged a shoulder, feeling her heart rate pick up and wondering why she never wanted Abby to leave.

She also wasn’t sure she could let Abby stay because if she said what she thought this was out loud, it might make it real.

“Can I borrow your computer?”

“What?” Quinn asked, unable to keep up with all the changes that were coming so quickly. “Abby, what?”

“Can I borrow your laptop? I need to look something up. Then, you and I really need to talk. Can you close the shop for a bit?” Abby brushed by her and hurried back into the shop.

“Sure, Abby. Let me just close my place of business toentertain the idea that you and I might have lived other lives together,” she muttered to herself and followed her inside.

She grabbed her computer while Abby knelt to clean up the cups and the melting ice off the floor, tossing everything into the trash before she washed her hands in the bathroom. When Quinn looked over, she caught the woman checking the damage to her clothes in the mirror before she wiped at her shirt with a paper towel as if that would fix anything. Then, Quinn got a vision of Abby standing in a different bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror.

“I have wrinkles now. I’m old,” Abby said in her mind.

Quinn walked up behind her and replied, “Well, I told you that I wanted to grow old with you.” She kissed her on the neck and wrapped her arms around her wife from behind.

“What the fuck?” she asked herself.